


In the Key of A Major

by bossxtweed



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Guitar, Other, University, starts off light hearted & ends with melancholy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:49:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24688669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bossxtweed/pseuds/bossxtweed
Summary: For a select number of students at St. Luke’s University, the highlight of every Tuesday and Thursday comes at noon, when the Doctor holds a two hour lecture on anything he fancies (in the early years, he had made a strict curriculum revolving around physics, but the concepts were far too advanced for Earth at the time and the Deans eventually caved, allowing the Doctor to speak on whatever he liked).
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Twelfth Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald, Twelfth Doctor/Missy
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	In the Key of A Major

For a select number of students at St. Luke’s University, the highlight of every Tuesday and Thursday comes at noon, when the Doctor holds a two hour lecture on anything he fancies (in the early years, he  _ had  _ made a strict curriculum revolving around physics, but the concepts were far too advanced for Earth at the time and the Deans eventually caved, allowing the Doctor to speak on whatever he liked). This week, he would detail the science behind Time Travel.

A group of students stand outside the lecture hall, waiting for the doors to open, and they whisper confidentially amongst themselves about their professor’s personal life.

“ ** _I_** think they’re related somehow,” one of the students says. “Have you _seen_ the way they act? She’s **_always_** teasing him.”

Another student shakes their head, saying, “no! If anything, they’re an _old married couple,_ constantly playing pranks on one another, **_and,”_** they point between their friends before saying, “she’s often seen wearing his clothes.”

“I agree,” a third student motions towards the second. Their eyes are wide and their cheeks flushed, and they say, “y’know, I---I walked in on them, once, during his office hours. She was leaving hickeys on his neck, and----”

Stepping out from the shadows, Missy says, “ _ yes,  _ I tease him,  _ no,  _ we’re not related, and---” she places one hand on the third student’s shoulder before saying, “I hope  _ you  _ enjoyed the show.”

Before any of them can answer, Missy pushes open the doors and waltzes into the room, humming to herself. Each one notes that, instead of her usual purple ensemble, she is dressed in a pair of purple slacks and an oversized grey hoodie (though they hadn’t paid enough attention to see what is on the front----a cartoon illustration of an astronaut on the moon, surrounded by circular font (which reads: ‘I WENT TO THE MOON AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS SWEATER’)----but they  _ know  _ it belongs to the Doctor). 

“----should we go in?” the third student asks, glancing towards the doors. “I mean,  _ he’s  _ not here yet, and I  **_really_ ** don’t want to be alone with  _ her….” _

More students walk past them and the trio follow suit, claiming seats in the front of the lecture hall ( _ far  _ away from Missy, who sits in the back of the room with her feet kicked onto her desk and her arms crossed over her chest, humming to herself). Noon approaches in a crawl. Students glance at their watches, their phone screens, their computers; anxious fingers tap against desks, pencils fly back and forth, bouncing off the wood; and voices echo, even in whispers, with one or two students loudly proclaiming that they can  _ leave  _ if the Doctor doesn’t show within the next five minutes, to which Missy loudly clears her throat and tells them off.

The Doctor barges into the room four minutes later, wearing a technicolor scarf wrapped several times around himself, hiding the marks which Missy had left the previous night ( _ ‘marking my territory,’  _ she had responded after Nardole barged in on them). Behind him trails Genevieve, who runs over to her mum, and Nardole, who has the rather  _ unfortunate  _ task of acting as the Doctor’s roadie, meaning dragging an amplifier behind him with the guitar strapped across his body. 

“Sorry I’m late, everyone!” the Doctor exclaims. “Had a bit of trouble getting ready this morning---I  _ tried  _ turtlenecks but didn’t like the way they felt, and wearing high collars reminds me too much of the pompous elites back home, and---” he stops, noting the silence in the room. “Ah. Anyway, bit of a change in plans: I’m postponing the lecture on Time Travel until Thursday, and today I’m going to be taking requests for music to play on my guitar.”

“Ooo! Ooo!” Missy exclaims, bouncing Genevieve in her lap. “I know! I know! Pick me!”

The Doctor glares at her before saying, “now, do any of my  _ regular _ students have any requests?”

A few voices ring out, some shouting things the Doctor has never heard of, others songs with lyrics far too explicit for a child’s ears, and the Doctor sighs before deciding to hear Missy’s suggestion (which, to his surprise, turns out to be a lullaby from their childhood). 

“This’ll be a tricky one,” he says, taking the guitar from Nardole. “Haven’t heard this one in, what? A few  _ billion  _ years?”

Several students exchange glances. Their professor  _ always  _ says things like that, and with his depth of knowledge, they can never quite tell if he is joking; perhaps he  _ does  _ come from a distant planet in a far-off galaxy, and perhaps he  _ has  _ had different faces, different bodies, several lifetimes worth of experience wrapped into one living being. One or two of them glance backwards, towards Missy, who sits with a smug smile on her face and a cellphone in both hands, primed to record.

The Doctor spends the lecture alternating between requests and songs he chooses to play, and when there are ten minutes left he asks for one more song, something exciting and challenging---the one caveat being, he must have played it before (and not within the past seventy-two hours). A few students nudge Missy, asking her what they should say, but she waves them all off and instead looks eagerly at her daughter’s drawing (of the pair of them with the Doctor, in his TARDIS’ console room).

“Oh, I know!” Bill announces triumphantly. “‘Pretty Woman’ by Roy Orbison? Missy told me you played it once---in a  _ medieval battle, _ of all places.”

The Doctor meets Missy’s eyes for a moment before nodding. “Ah. Bit fuzzy on the details, but I  _ think  _ that was at a  **_Renaissance fair,”_ ** he winks before playing the opening chord: A major.

A loose tear slips down his cheek.

He plays the first stanza before sorrow crashes over him, making it nearly impossible to breathe, and he falls to his knees, holding the guitar aloft to prevent damage. Nardole, Bill, and Missy (who gently tells her daughter not to worry) all rush forward to help him. 

“Doctor! Doctor, are you alright?” Bill asks as Nardole takes the guitar and drapes it over himself. Then, reaching a hand out, she says, “you’re crying.”

“Am I? Shit,” he laughs brokenly. “But **_why_** am I crying?”

Missy turns suddenly, dramatically, and in an exaggerated Scottish accent announces, “alright, that’s enough, you lot!  **_Class dismissed!”_ **

Without hesitation, the students pack their bags and leave, whispering among themselves all-the-while ( _why_ would their professor have such a strong reaction to **_that_** song, of all things?), and Nardole follows them out, again dragging the amplifier behind himself.

“Mummy?” Genevieve asks, running down the auditorium’s steps. “Is he alright?”

“I’m not sure, love,” Missy soothes, running one hand through her daughter’s curls. She turns towards the Doctor and says, “it wasn’t just the  _ song,  _ was it?”

The Doctor shakes his head. “No, it--it  _ wasn’t _ just the song. That battle, there---there was someone else there with you, wasn’t there?” when Missy nods, he continues, “thing is, I can _ not  _ picture them in my mind. It’s like….” he trails off, forcing himself to think back, trying in vain to remember despite the block, and when all he gets is a splitting headache, he curses loudly in his native tongue, causing Missy to gasp and cover her daughter’s ears.

“Watch your  **_language,_ ** man!” Missy chides, to which the Doctor glares at her. “I dinnae want Geni picking up  _ swear words _ when she’s just learning her  _ colors.” _

Bill throws her arms around the Doctor and he hesitates before wrapping his own around her in turn. After several moments he breaks the hug, wipes his eyes with the back of one hand, and turns towards Missy, asking,  _ “why  _ can’t I remember?”

Sighing, Missy moves away from Genevieve and sits down next to the Doctor, wraps one arm around him and twines her other hand through his, and she weighs what to tell him. She  _ had  _ seen Clara, the impossible version of her, the one who exists between heartbeats, travelling through the universe with a woman from the ninth century, running from the inevitable (a fact which Missy found to be  _ incredibly _ ironic, given how often the Doctor did such a thing), and Clara  _ had  _ sworn her to secrecy. 

“There was an accident,” she starts in a whisper, “y’ were travelling with a friend, and you wanted to wipe  _ their  _ memory---you wanted  _ them _ to forget  _ you _ \---but it backfired and  **_you_ ** were the one whose mind got wiped…”

Frowning, the Doctor stares intently at Missy, trying to determine whether or not she is lying to him----but the sorrow in her eyes weighs heavily in his hearts, and he dips his head and laughs sadly. “Ah. They were someone important, then?”

Missy nods.

Softly Genevieve asks, “are you okay, Doctor? You look very sad.”

He turns towards her and smiles, saying, “you’re right, Geni; I  _ am  _ sad, but that’s okay. Everyone is sad sometimes---that means you’re mourning, or maybe something didn’t quite go your way, or maybe you woke up that morning with the world weighing down on your shoulders, but that’s okay. And sometimes, you can’t fight it---that’ll only make it worse---so you just have to sit with your sadness.”

She nods, drapes her arms around her mother, and buries her face in the woman’s shoulder. Seeing the Doctor sad makes her sad---she  _ hates  _ seeing others sad---and the silence which creeps into the lecture hall makes her want to  _ scream,  _ but Missy hums, softly, a Gallifreyan lullaby, and the girl shuts her eyes and dozes off.

Whispering, the Doctor looks between Bill and Missy, saying, “thank you, both of you. I suppose I hadn’t realized how much that was affecting me…”

“If it’s bothering  _ you _ this much,” Bill starts, “then I imagine it’s bothering the other person even  _ more,  _ because they remember but you don’t…”

Missy motions towards Bill, saying, “Tha’s true. But the pair of you were  _ dangerous  _ together, love, just like we are. Sometimes, distance is the only viable solution.”

They sit in silence until students pour in for the next lecture. 


End file.
